That F’ing Monkey: Year One

Today is the One Year Anniversary of That F’ing Monkey. It is a small milestone but a surprising one. I didn’t have any idea what I was doing when I started writing. I figured I’d just throw a bunch of random thoughts out there. Over the year the concept evolved into what it is today. A lot of the early articles are a little embarrassing; full of broken YouTube or image links. For the longest time I kept trying to surprise people with content after the page break. It looks extremely silly when someone landed directly on the article instead of on the home page.

I’m extremely proud that I’ve made it this far. I think a number of people who know me thought I would quickly lose interest and move on to something else. I didn’t do that. In fact I’ve done pretty well at getting some kind of content up every scheduled day. The reading audience has changed too. When it started it was only those people who I’ve known for years. Now there are a number of names that I’ve never met face to face. The internet is a huge place full of boobies and silly animals; I thank anyone who takes the time away from those things to read what we have up here.

Here are the notable moments in That F’ing Monkey’s first year.

5/29/10: The very first post. It was about Dunedin Brewery’s Red Head Red Ale and extremely short.

6/11/10: The first article to receive a comment. It was a Uni-Formz Flash review.

6/24/10: Hangover Thursday is born

6/25/10: The first official Flash Friday.

8/3/10: The Copepod article. This page is still getting hits every week.

8/11/10: Brandon is brought in as a Guest Writer

8/13/10: Brandon’s first article as said Guest Writer

8/24/10: The first Tales of the Brain Jar.

10/27/10: We hit 100 articles. The site changed to the current layout.

12/6/10: Brandon becomes a full co-writer and begins Monday updates.

1/1/11: Punch becomes the F’ing Monkey mascot. The F’ing Monkey Facebook page is created.

1/2/11: The first All Swine’s Day is a huge success.

3/29/11 and 3/30/11: The first convention interviews!

4/12/11: The first playoff beard challenge.

5/28/11: T-Shirts!!!

5/29/11: One Year!

I hope the site builds and grows in the next year as much as it did this year. Some things we did will become annual events; I think the beard challenge was fun (even if neither of our teams made it to the cup finals) and next year we’ll be looking for other hockey fans to join in. There are a lot of things in the works behind the scenes and I can’t wait to talk about them.